yesterday, we finally had sun together with the first snow. unfortunately, i didn’t have much time before i had to leave to work, but i managed to take some nice shots. i would have loved to walk into the forest and take some pics there. i decided to do that today, but today no sun was around…
well, almost. in fact, it is the second snow. the first snow started on the day we left to monte verità, and when i returned almost a week later, it was gone. today, it started snowing for the second time. everything’s in white, and there’s a lot of snow. i hope this time it’ll stay longer so i can take some photos with sunlight and snow! :)
last weekend, we went on a walk starting at the castle bernegg ruin, walking through forests and a ravine towards hinwil. it was really nice outside, just some clouds and a bit of coldness. here are some impressions:
when arriving back in hinwil, we saw a little park close to our home. a really tiny one, just a few square meters:
it was also not very surprising what it’s name is:
yesterday my cat miukumauku had her first mouse (according to kornel, it’s a wood mouse). well, she didn’t catch it – that was done by the black cat, the only one of our cats who actually hunts –. but then, she somehow took it off the black cat, proceeded to play with it, while running around the appartment with the mouse in her mouth while growling (scaring off the other cats, most of whom didn’t care anyway, and in part maybe because she didn’t really know what to do with the mouse, i think). then, she finally managed to kill the mouse, and after some more playing proceeded to eat it. completely, with bones, skin and tail.
(in fact, this was not miukumauku’s first mouse. she was dragging a mouse around earlier – one also caught by the black cat –, but that mouse managed to escape and hide where the cats couldn’t grab it. unfortunately, we also couldn’t get it out of there, but then it got out overnight and was eaten – at least we think so, since we found leftovers of a mouse next morning…)
update: here’s a photo from the older incident:
this week, i was attending a conference on monte verità in ticino.
on tuesday we shifted the afternoon lectures by two hours to be able to exploit the great weather to visit ascona:
on wednesday, we went on an excursion to bellinzona. unfortunately, the weather was not so great. we began with a tour through castelgrande and continued with a short city tour. here are some impressions:
last weekend we travelled to dresden. with perfect weather, we (re-)explored the city and parts of the sächsische schweiz. we first started with a hop-on/hop-off sightseeing tour which led us among other things to the blue wonder, schwebebahn dresden, the funicular railway, the “balcony of dresden” (luisenhof), the dresden-neustadt station’s entrance hall and the “toilet cinema”. some impressions from these places can be seen below:
here are also some shots from during the night, mainly showing dresden downtown:
finally, we did an excursion to the sächsische schweiz, namely to the bastei and the adjacent neurathen castle. from there, we descended down to rathen and took a paddle wheeler from there back to dresden. here are some impressions. (you can see “our” paddle wheeler in the photos above, it was the “pillnitz”.)
as you can see, we had a great time with perfect weather. most of the time during the excursion, there wasn’t a single cloud on the sky!
yesterday we were on an excursion, which led us from our home to some nice places between lake constance and schaffhausen with a final stop in baden before we returned home.
we first traveled to tägerwilen to look at a small design settlement with eight houses, where different materials were used. unfortunately, the weather wasn’t very great at that point, and it was not very easy to take good pictures there anyway… afterwards, we walked over to gottlieben and waited for our boat.
we traveled by boat on lake constance and the rhine to schaffhausen. the weather was still not great, it was cloudy, but at least it wasn’t raining. when approaching schaffhausen, the clouds started to rip apart.
in schaffhausen, the clouds began to clear up. we explored the old town a bit.
finally, we walked up to the munot, a fortification built during the 16th century. from there we had a great view – some of the above photos were taken from there or from the way up/down.
finally, we proceeded by train to waldshut to drink coffee, and continued by train to baden to eat dinner. at least, that was what we planned to do in baden. turns out that the city center is essentially dead from 6 pm on, except fast food “restaurants” or pubs. we had to walk quite some distance outside of the city center to find something to eat; we ended up in an italian restaurant chain near the kantonsschule. on the way back, two of us who had to travel westwards wanted to take bus 3, which would have allowed them to arrive home earlier than if they would take the later bus which would be perfect for us. bus 3 is supposed to leave at the same stop. unfortunately, unknown to us and also to google maps, apple maps, map.search.ch etc., there are two stops called “kantonsschule”. at the time we located the second stop on a map, their bus was already gone… really great. anyway, we eventually got back to the main station, and were able to depart in direction of our beds after this long day…
yesterday, when the weather was surprisingly beautiful, we were outside. me, mostly hanging around with my telephoto lens, watching the kittens play, hide, and explore.
later, on the inside, i took some photos of the older cats as well, while they were waiting for food:
they had to wait a bit longer. first, we did some cooking: a vegetarian zürcher geschnetzeltes (based on dinki) with rösti. won’t be the last time we had that :)
